


Obiter Dicta

by Rational_Drunk



Series: The Dating of Jesse McCree [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Europe, M/M, Not really slowburn but relationship is not established from the getgo, Pining Hanzo, Rated for Future Fireworks, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-27 13:06:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10021940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rational_Drunk/pseuds/Rational_Drunk
Summary: This work focuses on three things. The exploration of the Overwatch universe, the mysterious emergence of a God AI, and the immutable, inescapable, ineluctable fact, that Hanzo Shimada likes Jesse McCree.





	1. Deianira

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Its stopper was pommeled with a limpid orb, and in its sunfire glint Hanzo examined his own apprehensive reflection. “For you. This potion will make him fall for you, Hanzo, simple as that. It is sweet, so you can hide it in drinks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No McCree in this first scene, although he is the central theme.

“Swindler? ...Sir, you wound my heart. Wait just a moment.” He fumbled amongst tinkling bottles behind the counter and extracted a brochure. “Here. My sponsor!”

Hanzo found it difficult to understand why this was happening to him. Frowning, he snatched the document from the rook’s hand, where it remained frozen in its remonstrations.

“Nestlé,” read Hanzo aloud.

“Exactly! Nestlé that I’m selling! Nestlé that you’ve heard of, they make the choccies, the coffees, the Smarties, formula for making babies, lasagna! The best lasagna, the best cheese!”

“And love potions.” Hanzo set the brochure on top of the counter.

“Right! As you can see here.” With his free hand he flipped through the prospectus on the counter and slapped open the central page. Between splayed fingers Hanzo could make out coconut-white serifs dripping:  _GO ON… KIDS CAN’T HAVE ALL THE FUN_ , and beneath that chiding, a clear confabulation, a decoupage of various photographic snippets of ruby-veined alembics exsanguinating into crystal decanters. The steam rising from their volcanic rims swelled into purple hearts, and around the page sundry logos and emblems had been abducted from their natural habitats and were impasted on to the moss gloss like so many marooned planets, their rings decorated with declarations of authority. They orbited that which they endorsed: an unscissored photograph in the centre of the brochure, displaying a scene of vernal potions arranged in diamond procession on the mauve stall of a bearded Anteros in the shadow of a date, who beamed at him from beneath a drooping bunting.

Hanzo made to leave.

“Wait!” Came the stumbling bearded cry at his back. “Wait! I know the one you like! It is a he!”

Hanzo stopped. The quiver strapped to the back of his khaki jack jostled with startled arrows, and he reached back to calm it.

“How...”

“You need not speak! Come, just come! Yes, we don’t want others to overhear, do we?” A woman tourist, encrusted in polymer pearls, adjusted her red-rimmed sunglasses as she asked a neighbouring stall in English if they had any Madeira.  _No_. “Yes, love alchemist Tim knows all!” Tim pointed at the repetition in the brochure. “The one you like, he is a manly man, yes, with brown hair!”

“There is no way you could have known that.” Hanzo’s eyes narrowed. It was impossible for a stranger to be familiar with his preferences, much less his proclivity for McCree. He entertained the possibility that this was a trap and discarded it.  _No one knew_. Was there actually something arcane…

Bearded Tim shushed him. “I am concentrating, I am seeing in my mind’s eye, the image of your unrequited love. It is very blurry, there is much cloud, but oh yes, I can see, that he is very, very handsome. My mind’s eye can see why you like him, Hanzo — shhh, Hanzo, you distract me with that prattle, you don’t want the wrong potion, do you? Mistletoe is poisonous if misapplied. Again, again, what beautiful chocolatey hair, and I know, believe me, a thing or two about chocolate (pointed at the  _NESTLÉ_  in the brochure)! And — what is this!”

“What!” Hanzo asked sharply, the nylon pooling around his fists. He did not know when he had started leaning upon the counter. To his right, the woman tourist asked a young attendant why, exactly, they did not sell any Madeira. “What is what!”

“I see… I see another shape. It is a great blur, next to your prince.” Tim brought his hands to his face and peered into the conch of their darkness. His muffled voice said: “It is, oh no! It is a terrible omen, it is the towering elk, the tumescent Priapus, the asterism of lust and destruction! I see it clearly. An Alderking hovers over your fated one, and is ready to take him for his own!”

“What! Who is it!”

“I cannot say, but it appears that — wait, I can hear him muttering. It sounds like… German. Do you know any Germans?”

“Reinhardt!” The explosive realization sent his forelock flying across his eye like shrapnel.

Timagoras snapped an epiphanic finger. “Yes, Reinhardt! That he is, and like the behemoth from Overwatch of the same name he brims with contumax and manly virility! This is bad, very bad indeed for you, and worse because I see that Mr. Hanzo and the brown-haired gentleman are the fated ones, and the German an interloper of destiny! A simple tincture of love would not do, not when there is such formidable counter-love! But worry not, I have just the mixture you need!”

Breathing heavily, Hanzo stared, wild-eyed through the haze of his desperation and the bokeh of a dangling lock of hair, at a sympathetic Tim the alchemist who shook his head in pity. To blonde Tim’s right commerce continued, in a patient voice,  _because I sell sunglasses, not wine._ Not even Madeira?  _No, not even Madeira, that is a wine. I sell sunglasses_.

“Your potion, what will it do?” Hanzo asked finally, his heart having abated to a more deliberate rhythm. He straightened his jack by gripping each of its open flaps and tauting them, and squaring his shoulders. When was the last time he had seen Reinhardt together, with Jesse? In Gibraltar, at a group picnic under the shade of a jacaranda, amongst the lindens and the limes and swaying to the strum of a balalaika (Zarya). A laughing Reinhardt had clapped sipping Jesse on the back, sending a fan of green tea (Hanzo) spraying into a pile of watercress sandwiches (unhappy Hana). So that’s it. Old, happy, healthy,  _treacherous_  Reinhardt, who once in the oblivion aftermath of a late night drinking contest, had confided in Hanzo (in reciprocation) his interest in a  _great shot_ , but he need not worry, a sake burp, it was not McCree. Lies, then. Hanzo was used to lies. Jesse had called him gullible, but even a suspicious Hanzo could not have anticipated that his German “friend” would have crooned so low.  _Mal cauto il cuore_! His heart twisted, and throbbed unpleasantly.

The alchemist wrestled with the ears of a cardboard box, won, and with a zigzag stiletto tilled through a bar of adhesive tape. From the box’s open womb he extracted a crystal decanter and placed it on the counter, of the same shape and cut as its cousins (brilliant bowl, a kaleidoscope pavilion leading into a tapered swan neck) but which housed instead a dark green elixir, an emerald glittering amongst rubies.  _I don’t care if this is Madeira, I said there is no Madeira. You can buy a sunglasses, crazy lady, or you can leave._ Its stopper was pommeled with a limpid orb, and in its sunfire glint Hanzo examined his own apprehensive reflection. “For you. This potion will make him fall for you, Hanzo, simple as that. It is sweet, so you can hide it in drinks.”

Hanzo paid three hundred euros for that promise. The man was magic, of that there was no doubt, and he had been taught from a young age that accidents with such creatures of fate and precognition were to be cherished utterly, rare as they were like the leprechaun address at the end of a rainbow, or the firefly constellation in some dark hibernacle of winter. One would be pauper indeed to depart from such an interview without at least an ingot of gold or a brightest lucida plucked from the map of a future cynosure, to show for it, and tucking away his sparkling prize into his satchel, he made to leave.

Hanzo was in the process of calculating how much mountain dew (the only liquid disguise that came burbling to his mind) he could get away with offering McCree, when a familiar skating sound pulled him out of his poisonous prepense.

“Hanzo!” sport cap Lúcio called from the side of a building, the perpendicular surface of, to the inclined planeswalker, a transverse street. He arced over the pothole of a window, contoured around the bracken of some starfish wisteria, and then swirling with the whirlpool of a curved architrave he ramped off a whitewater jamb. Hugging his momentum he drifted his hard-light skates across the cobblestones without a single incongruent wobble, then skipped a flagstone, then stopped. At the bottom of a soup du jour some transients ceased their perambulations to provide an ovation. Lúcio thanked them loudly and reminded them of an upcoming concert, then turned to Hanzo and reminded him of: “Operation, kaffeeklatsch! 3pm, and it is now…” Dipping into a watch. “3pm!”

“No one told me of this,” Hanzo said, brushing down the manifold pockets attached to the front of his jack. They had to leave, immediately. Before Lúcio stuck his kibitzer nose into his magical experience. He traced the vector of his friend’s arrival on to the streets below, and began to walk hurriedly against it.

“What were you doing there?” Lúcio asked, surveying the jellyfish fountain in the centre of the plaza, where under a canopy of bunting a cluster of stalls sprouted against its banks. “Say, did you get new sunglasses?”

“No! Now let us go, we do not want the others to wait.”

“The coffee shop’s  _that_  way by the way,” he said to an opposite Hanzo. “And what — this guy’s selling love potions? Holy shit!” Hanzo’s heart sank as his best friend skated towards Tim the love alchemist, who beamed. “Now, what kind of dumb dumb would fall for that!” Tim frowned.

“He is not a fraud!”

Spinning around on the tang of his skates, Lúcio stared at Hanzo, who blushed in embarassment. Hanzo ascribed his implicating outburst to a combination of indignation and shock. One has to realise, despite whatever impression they may have been nursing thus far (which they should wean immediately), that Hanzo was not a superstitious man. He believed in no god, nor gods (note the lack of capitalisation for the singular), and instead of inserting some eidolon or sprite or kampong kami into the gaps of his ignorance, like the frantic oakum in the caulking of a sinking ship, followed instead the typical atheistic prescription of chaos, letting it sink. After all, the unknown cannot be named, lest it become known, the same elenctic which partly explains why at thirty-eight years old, he had yet to name his spirit dragons (Genji who followed no such philosophy, named his  _Gyarados,_ after an ancient Greek playwright, that inimical rival of Euripides who once in the haze of a bacchian feast had made a smoked carp come magically to life).

Alchemist Tim performed the supernal, but not, to Hanzo’s mind, the supernatural. In his understanding of the world in which we all share its natural rules and bylaws, there is a permanent footnote, which proscribes the breaking of these laws not by human diapasons of justice, of tinkling remunerations and clanking prison bars or some hammer striking its podium in reverse and reverse but by the very  _diction_  of interdiction. Nature exists, to borrow a saying of Ptah, as Ptah says it. And if a natural law is to be ostensibly broken to afford the birth of some  _phenomena non grata_ , say, an interstitial star, or a fox in the Precambrian — then all Arcady is realigned, for natural law cannot be broken, it is  _law_ , and to declare something supernatural is to declare it false. Nothing can exist beyond nature, for all ignorance is subsumed within her shores. Human surprise can beach nothing neither above nor below it.

That, summarises the indignation. The following explicates the shock.

By performing the impossible (hitherto impossible, e.g., a.k.a., i.e. magic) alchemist Tim revealed himself to be a creature of a first cosmos (of human ignorance, rather than nature, for that is impossible, although to tally the stylobate wonder of  _not knowing_  in both coevality and tradition we in pursuit of this theme must refer to ignorance as magic), gently docked in our world under the chiaroscuro of a date tree, and staying only insofar as to coincide with the duration of Hanzo’s attention. Floating, Alchemist Tim revealed to Hanzo his omniscience and terrorised him with repeating visions, of an aquarellist’s watery nightmare dripping an endless succession of impasto Reinhardts and fumando McCrees, and of a concatenation of jilted Hanzos sobbing to the side, wet in wet, until the Elpis of a tincture of magic had released itself from the box of the blonde alchemist and floated into his satchel.

That first cosmos of magic, wonder, and the coetaneous substance, where future melted into present, had been emulsified and forgotten when Hanzo left behind its nictitating shores to return to our planet in a paradigm ship of reification.  _Our_  planet (i.e. the second cosmos, reality), which housed the mundane and the prosaic drab where women tried to buy wine from eyewear merchants and where Lúcio swayed next to him to the barely audible  _ritmo_  of  _O Ritmo Do Amor_ , and where in the shadow of delineated consecution awaited Hanzo nothing but the anticipated, of: a titration of syrup, a subterfuge at supper, a cowboy in his arms. And yet! In a crossing of universes Lúcio the psychopompous had skated to the door of a Fossegrim under his jellyfish waterfall, and sent the harpoon of reality crashing through the bright transit of the evening star, undraining its texture and dragging it back to our jetties to dismantle its pinkish sail. This chance kick to the astrolabe fused together both those disparate cosmoi, merged together those dichotomous universes of fable and prose, and Hanzo, the coeval of those two worlds, the creviced inbetween, could scarcely be spared the explosive big bang of their collision. “He is special.” Hanzo breathed heavily, in the detonated crossroads. He looked at Lúcio, that confused agent of the mundane, and then at Tim, Fossegrim Tim. “Show him.”

The alchemist nodded, and prying apart the wrack of a sea-green brochure with the hill of his thumb, handed it to Lúcio. Lúcio squinted under the darkness of his cap, lifted its bill to let in the sun, then squinted again.

“Nestlé?”

“Not that!” Hanzo leaned into the counter, the prison bars on the blonde man’s chemise shuttering spasmodically with the bow strung to his back. “Tell him his name, like you told me mine. Predict something!”

Alchemist Tim peered at Lúcio, examined Lúcio, pursed his lips and shook his head at Lúcio; but did not say Lúcio.

Lúcio was still reading the brochure. “ _Kids can’t have all the fun_ … I’m pretty sure that’s from an ice-cream commercial. Hey, is this picture glued on top of a cornetto?”

“At least try?” Hanzo pleaded. Tim scratched at his beard.

“There is much mist. But I am concentrating with my mind’s eye, I think I can begin to see…”

“Yes, yes.”

“See…”

“Well?” Lúcio cocked a brow. He slid his weight to the slant, but otherwise remained utterly still. Hanzo realised that he must have at some point turned off his electric music.

“See nothing! As I said, there is too much mist, too much negative energy. And between you and me, Mr. Hanzo, my mind’s eye doesn’t work too well with close-minded, skeptical people.”

“Does it work better with gullible people?”

“How is it that you knew my name, but not  _his_!” Hanzo cried. “He is a very famous DJ!”

“And singer. But DJ is fine. Eighty percent of my last album was sung. But DJ is fine.”

Tim observed Lúcio with renewed interest. His forefinger tapping at the invisible strings of some mnemic carillon, he ventured: “Jayden Smith.”

“That dude is like,  _eighty_!”

Hanzo splayed his fingers through his hair, stared at where his palm stopped between his eyes. The collision of worlds, which should have converged into a shining overlap between prophet Tim and mundane Lúcio, in a gloaming gibbous of eclipse twilight, had been decided instead in the utter destruction of the first planet. His fable was being shattered, his magic destroyed. He raised the flap of his satchel and peered at his three-hundred-euro flask, and was surprised to see that it had not already crumbled into stardust. He harbored yet some slight hope.

“Lúcio, he —“

“Lúcio!” Tim clapped his hands in recognition, then divvied them into an arcing, mystical wave.

“The game’s already over, dude.”

Hanzo shook his head, then leaned into Lúcio’s ear, whispered: “He not only knew my name, but he also knew about Jesse.”

“Really?” Lúcio eyed the blonde man in sudden suspicion. “Trident — nah. No one would know that. About Jesse. Only me and Reinhardt know, right? I mean, who’d care? (irrational hurt) Are you sure that’s  _exactly_  what he said to you?”

“Well...” Hanzo rubbed his palm against his forehead. He squinted, rolled his eyes to the upper left, as though perlustrating the gray lobes of some invisible memory gland. “He said he knew I liked a  _man_ , and that he had brown hair. But even that much, is impossible!”

Lúcio’s mouth dilated, slowly, the opening “o” of open horror.

“What did you do!”

“Err… before I tell you that, let me confirm something first.” He rapped at the counter. Tim, who it appears to have long since lost interest in their conversation, looked up from the mottled rainbows of his cellphone. Lúcio pointed at Hanzo. “Hey, love alchemist. You know, it would be really convincing if you could tell us his full name.”

“I think I might be able to do that.”

“I think you probably could.”

And that was that. Diviner Tim set the dark scrying glass of his phone on the counter, crossed his arms, and rolling his pupils into their orbital lofts (Lúcio was to replicate the motion, later in the process, at sarcastic intervals) used the upward instability to drag his eyelids aflutter. A murky somnambulist he peered into the spasmodic edges of those butterfly curtains, and seemingly gazed through violently ebbing worlds to a third — intercalated — dimension. His right hand detached itself from its bejewelled partner (of a cabochon sunset in a halo of gold) and began to scan through the evening spires of infinitely tumbling archives for the concept of a man whose name was... His hand stopped. He had found the brass plaque of the blur before him, and with a twisting motion he retrieved the scroll of nomenclature from the repository it adorned. Having acquired what he came for he then exited the prophetic dimension by opening his eyes, where in a chromatic blast a high-definition Hanzo stood glaring and breathing. It appears that in its nescient wanderings our prophet’s hand had gripped on to his shirt, and was twisting it. Tim attempted to smooth the front of the Yakuza’s chest with coaxing caresses, but was promptly rebuffed, and sorrowfully he withdrew his slapped appendage like a shrinking anemone.

“The mists are thick and soupy, but they cannot deceive my mind’s eye. I know who you are.” He smiled into Hanzo’s frown. He cleared his throat, and with the snapping thunderbolt of a deictic forefinger declared: “Hanzo Ichikami!”

Hanzo fixed him with a blank stare.

“Oh, oh, oh, okay!” Lúcio said to his side. “So that’s what happened.”

“I ask again, what did you do!”

“Remember a week ago when you said —” Lucio hunched his shoulders, transformed a dreadlock into a forelock, and in his best impression of Hanzo, said: “— ‘ _No, I do not want a Tinder profile!_ ’”

“ _I told you I do not want a Tinder profile!_ ” Hanzo said angrily, his forelock dancing with every violent syllable. “Are you telling me, that that man… No! I cannot believe you did this! You did not have my permission, and that was paramount!” He seethed. He was not sure if he was angrier at the treachery or the morbid, abject,  _morbid_  embarassment, and so to compensate he seethed at the boiling points of both. “And  _Ichikami_? You named me after a  _shampoo_?”

“Hey, I don’t know Japanese. It was either that or sashimi.”

Hanzo growled.

The love alchemist stared at the commotion with blank uninterest. His elbow was on the mauve, his fist propped up his cheek, and with his free hand he absently coaxed his gelled hair into further deteriorating shape. Then all at once he unfolded his posture and slammed the counter with a great bang, at the indent where his phone used to be.

“Hey!”

“Shut up Ryan Reynolds.” Lúcio tapped away at the mosaic. “Yup. As I thought, he checked your profile before he’d even seen you — oh. Oh.”

“What?” Hanzo snapped.

“He swiped left.”

Hanzo wrestled the swindler to the ground. Over the scuffle and the yelps and his own angry heart throbbing in his ears, he missed when, somewhere far behind them, the tingles and jingles of approaching spurs tolled their distant metallic note. His hands like talons had seized upon a pocket purse, and was clawing at its zipper for immediate restitution when he heard a low voice cough, then utter:

“Howdy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Busy with school (and videogames). I will release new chapters at least once per fortnight, and at most once per sennight (week).


	2. Sir Thomas Gregory the Third

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the principal Kofi Aromo of Funchal, Hanzo rejoins the rest of his companions. A conversation chapter.
> 
> McCree in the same scene, finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've not bothered to add annotations to this chapter, as it is less abstruse. Feel free to ask for them though.

The ceiling of Funchal’s Kofi Aromo was a translucid affair, a reticulated skylight which arced over the floating jetties of a mezzanine. Pharah stomped her way across the sonorous gangway, above the rest of the café and its dine and din, to the table where they sat. Before pulling out a chair she hung a plastic bag of indeterminate content on the prolix of a pipe.

“So. Where did you go today, Hanzo? Ah, Pharah, welcome back. Let me pour you some Aromo.”

Hanzo looked up from his éclair. “I walked around town, but did not visit anywhere specific.”

“A general answer for a general day, then. It has been a general day for me as well, the swimming pool was generally quite warm, and the general stores were resplendent with General cigarettes. Here, do try this petit-fours, it is quite fantastic. It is good that we have some civilization out in these boondocks docks. Pharah, you might want to read this menu.”

“Tom. Funchal is a developed city.” Tracer pointed at the skyscrapers in the skylight. “It’s first world, it’s Portugal! And you need to go out and explore the port while we’re here, all you’ve done is muck around in the hotel.”

“I have been out, I am out right now.”

“In a Kofi Aromo! And all you do is spend the entire day by the pool, go out ten feet of the hotel to buy some cigarettes, and then just go back in again. I thought you were supposed to be cultured.”

Tom sniffed. “My programming must employ a different definition of culture.” He wrapped his metal fingers around the delicate ear of a teacup, and poured its steaming contents into where he unhinged his metal mouth.

Hanzo recalled his first encounter with a luxury omnic, some chromium judge at a wine-tasting in sunny Numbani, where he was disturbed by both the poor chardonnay (which the judge declared carried a certain zest, that rarefied something they add into wine to make it more expensive) and the retching unheimlich. Today, Hanzo discovered that his distress at such omnic humanness, perhaps obtunded through his daily inurement, had been reduced to nothing more than a vague sensation of novelty. “Where are you going, Pharah?” Tom asked.

“To order something.” She pointed through the brass convolvuli of the railing, at the display counter downstairs manned by an aproned omnic. A large chalkboard and its various scribblings adorned the reddish bricks behind him. “They say they make the best pastéis de nata in Madeira. I don’t know what that is, though.”

“They’re a genre of egg tarts. I’m interested to try.”

“You have comms for ordering things,” Tracer piped up. “You have them in every Kofi Aromo, just hold down this button.”

“Oh yes, I forgot. I have been to one in Montréal.” Pharah hovered over the register. “Hello, I would like a dozen pastéis de nata, and white coffee.”

Through the table’s registers the aproned omnic boomed if Pharah wanted mountain cream on her coffee, and thanked her before disconnecting.

“That was very loud, wasn’t it?” Pharah frowned at the tsunami subsiding in her mug.

Tracer nodded. “Yeah, Lúcio actually went downstairs to drop a complaint about it.”

“That’s ironic.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s McCree?” Pharah asked Hanzo, who paused in the delicate dissection of an éclair. “He said he was going out to find you.”

 _He did find me_. In an open plaza straddled atop an alchemist whose purport was Deianira, each pushing and pulling at the lobes of the other’s face. McCree had drawled (in that heart-throb drawl, but Hanzo’s heart was already throbbing, and so to compensate it simply throbbed harder), asked if everything was alright, as Hanzo clamped his hand over the swindler’s mouth, muting him. _Everything is fine_. McCree asked who the mute was. _Unimportant_. Tim’s wrestling lips slid from beneath his palm and began to declare his profession. Lúcio cranked up _O Ritmo Do Amor_ to its maximum volume. Hanzo reapplied his binding fingers, shouted, _yes, a love potion seller. I refused, and he insulted me, calling me less than a man._ McCree commented idly, that if anyone had to rely on love potions to win their sweetheart, then they were the ones who ain’t real men.

The éclair _éclaté_ , with all its rich vanilla and crème chiboust oozing from its melted capsule, suddenly appeared to him immensely unappetizing. Poorer by three-hundred euros and whatever rudiment of self-respect, in exchange for a heavy stone in his satchel. He would have to get rid of that, before McCree saw, an event that was as unlikely as it was unlikeable.

“Hanzo?”

“Yes. Sorry. He went downstairs with Lúcio to see —“

“Croquembouche!” cried Tracer in her chair.

“Croquembouche!” cried Lúcio from the stairs.

“— the croque-en-bouche, they have a very large one with a hundred and fifty profiteroles,” Hanzo continued. Over the sound of approaching skates he could hear spurs.

“A’ight. I’ve seen it finally. And you weren’t kiddin’, Lena. It’s a fine sight to behold.”

 _As are you_.

The following conversation, interjected at intervals with the scraping of forks upon plates, and chairs upon the mezzanine, comprised within its banter and chatter and fusillade _fous rires_ three major themes. Namely, what exactly was a croquembouche, and whether or not Pharah should go see it for herself immediately despite her pastéis de nata which were on the brink, risking their freshest iteration (she chose the tart over the choux), Hanzo’s committed silence, and thirdly, the subject of HAL-Fred Glitchbot’s upcoming film, “The Triplets of Paris”.

“Glitchbot has never even _been_ to Paris! How could he possibly begin to capture its ambiance, its air’s _l’air_ , and the swirling ribbons of _la seine_ , _la seine_?”

“He hasn’t been to the moon either, Tom.” Tracer’s elbows rested on the table, each fist propping up a drooping cheek. The listless posture, and the increased volume to her cheekbones gave her the appearance of a bored hamster.

“That’s different. Hardly anyone’s ever been to the moon, it’s fantasy.”

“And most people who are going to watch the Triplets’ movie haven’t been to Paris, either. Maybe Glitchbot doesn’t know Paris, but he probably knows the _impression_ of Paris better than any of us. And that’s all you need for a movie.”

“How positively shallow.”

“You just don’t like Glitchbot because he’s an omnic.”

“I’m an omnic!”

“Exactly! That’s why it’s cool for you to dislike him, _oh look I’m Tom an omnic who hates Glitchbot_. _I’ll bet you weren’t expecting that. Beep beep. That’s because I’m not one of those sheep who like things just because they’re omnic-friendly. I’m sophisticated. Beep. I’m discerning, I’m discriminating, I’m —_ “

“That is a terrible impression of me. Hanzo, that is nothing like me.”

“It is nothing like you.”

“Thank you. Lena, I seem to recall you hating the human Johanne Saxe-Coburg’s Hairy Princess movies. Are you trying to be cool as well?”

Perhaps because it was the first time Hanzo had spoken in ten minutes, or perhaps because coincidence determined that it was also the first time McCree was to speak in ten minutes; former or latter, it certainly felt as though Hanzo’s voice was the chemical impetus which spurred the cowboy’s sudden question:

“Where did you go today, Hanzo?” Brown eyes stared into his own. Hanzo could never really decide which combination of ingredients saturated those autumn pools. Did there shine more brightly in their glistening darkness, the Caravaggio umber of a candlelit cantata, or the Rembrandt sienna burnt into the mirror side of a paradise cloud? Did he espy the Lagerstätte ochre or bitumen, of those ancient murals, queuing and marching in an Egyptian Ra’s sandy tomb? What was the product of their mixture, were those eyes more chestnut brown than chestnut wood? Were they more caramel or more cinnamon, that is, would he prefer them sweet over a bowl of popcorn in the flickering theatre of a living room couch, or would he prefer them for all their piquant spice, shocking in their acridity, and heavy under the intimations of those shuttering lashes as McCree murmured... It was infuriating! What exactly was the shade of those twin hickories standing in those Arizona eyes! What was their mystery pigment, which contributed their fantasy hue? A million questions which Hanzo felt for sure would drive him mad if left unanswered. And yet he never had enough time to finish his detective work, he could not, for fear that in a dreadful reversal of roles he would surrender unwilling evidence instead. McCree was beginning to frown. That! He was too obvious, again. Obvious Hanzo!

“I explored the town, visited a few stores, but otherwise did nothing interesting.”

“Other than gettin' into fights with street hucksters?”

To his side, through the slight incline of his head, Hanzo could tell that Lúcio was listening.

“That was the culmination of my day, I —”

“Scratched ‘im up like a tiger. Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

Hanzo did not know what to reply. McCree continued, after a brief silence:

“Bought anythin’?”

There was a lump in his throat and a lump in his satchel. “Not really.”

“I thought you might’ve done somethin’. You mentioned how you liked the art here.”

“What art!” Tom broke through his neighbouring coversation into theirs. “Everything here is derivative. This entire island is derivative! They’re all El Grecos, burgundy snails swimming in the sauce of other cultures. Pre-Raphaelite, Caravaggisti. Cubist, like Picasso, who is like El Greco. What could these island dodos paint that is not lite or like or ist or isti?”

“I’m more interested in the modern art. Afremov lives here, as does Fiori.”

“A Pole and a Corse! This island is a leech on the canvas of Europe, you see what I mean!”

“Afremov is Belarusian.”

McCree chuckled.

Tom sniffed. He did not care. “Why have you not been to their galleries?”

“I planned to, but did not realise it was out of Funchal. Without your own vehicle, the only way to get there is by cable transport.”

“Those cable cars?” McCree raised an eyebrow.

“Yes. Specifically that tallest line you see going north.” Hanzo pointed out a honeycomb pane, at the colonnade hovering over the distant downtown with its network of beaded strings. “The art gallery is on a mountaintop, about two kilometers above the sea.”

“Now that’s interestin’. How long is this ride?”

“It takes over an hour to reach the top.”

McCree leaned on his thigh, laughed. “At that rate, might as well get Lena to fly you there.”

“I told you!” Tracer angrily inhaled half an egg tart. “That there are regulations on this island! There are speed limits! Do you see the amount of air traffic out there, and those cable cars! I can’t just fire up the afterburners and go eff all, _wheee,_ I’m superbird! It’s dangerous!”

“Are you not confident in your abilities, then?” asked Tom. Tracer shot him a deadly look, and a disappointed one at Pharah when she laughed. Her plate was decorated with crumbs. Everyone had quite finished her pastéis de nata.

“Shall we call for the bill?”

“Do lets.”

A fork shivered out of his plate when the registers boomed that a waiter would be with them shortly. Tracer leaned into the mic, over the rattling cutlery, and said, “thank you, God.”

The aproned omnic waved at them from below, and called out that she was welcome.

“Hey,” Lúcio said suddenly. “Jesse. Why don't you and Hanzo go to the art gallery together. You told me you couldn’t find anything to do.”

Hanzo’s eyes widened. McCree scratched at his beard.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind goin’ up a mountain.”

“But I doubt there is anything that would appeal to you there. You do not like modern art.” Hanzo’s protest was more perfunctory than genuine.

“I like sunsets. Could do to broaden my horizons. And who knows, you might’ve a thing or two to show me.”

“I’m free this entire evening.” Tracer broke her straw through some ice cubes, to slurp at a puddle of moccha. “I’ll fly you guys. And might as well join you.”

“I’ll come too,” said Tom.

“No!” Lúcio said. He dipped his head and looked at Hanzo intently. “I mean. Don’t you want to take the cable car, Hanzo?”

“I —”

McCree shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Could be a good view.”

“The cable cars only seat two people per ride, guess you other guys are out,” Lúcio declared.

Tom started. “We can always —”

“Come to my surprise concert, in the Teixeira square! It starts right now, I know, what a surprise, let’s go! And you two.” Pointed at Hanzo and McCree. “Get to the cable station. Don’t want to be late for the stick paintings.”

Perhaps Hanzo might one day forgive Correia for the Tinder affair, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Busy with school (and videogames). I will release new chapters at least once per fortnight, and at most once per sennight (week).


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